Sapien

Sapien is a blockchain based social news platform that is driven by user rewards for content creators, with a high level of customisation.

How it works:

Sapien works on blockchain technology to create a decentralized reputation based social platform that empowers users and content creators.

The platform incentivizes users to create high-quality content by awarding SPN tokens. The system of incentives will charge 10 SPN for posting, and will reward good posts by tokens as well. SPN tokens can be stacked to pay for transactions in the system, or be liquid and exchangeable.

Users can also upvote other users’ contributions to reflect their expertise and the quality of their creations. This voting system will bring the best content forward, limiting the influence of trolls and fake news and supporting the creators.

Another prominent feature of the platform is monetizing advertisements. By default users will not see advertising, but they can choose to. If they do, they will share no less than 50% of the advertising revenue with the platform.

The platform will include all the things that are great about social networks. Subscriptions to content makers, friends, groups and posts as well as a feature rich chat. The chat is encrypted so no one will be able to disturb users’ privacy. Using Sapien anonymously is possible as well, through private browsing mode. The company also puts an emphasis on Sapien being highly customizable to ensure the best experience for all users.

Innovation:

Sapien is one of the first social platforms of this kind. Many technical features are pioneered and developed by the co-founders themselves. The project also brings some innovative ideas to the market, like users sharing advertising revenue.

Innovation score: High

Token value:

SPN token doesn’t act as a share and users will not achieve a part of company’s income. However, since it is used in many transactions on the platform, with the growth of the user base its price will steadily grow as well.

Token value score: Medium

White paper:

The white paper is rich in details and is overall well composed. It includes the description of user stories, talks about market opportunities, and presents the project’s business model. It also describes the features of the platform thoroughly, shows a deep analysis of possible competitors, and a risk analysis.

White paper score: High

Roadmap:

The project’s roadmap is also rich, it contains milestones and the vision of what the platform will become.

The team has released a closed alpha in 2016. As of today Sapien has a live beta released. For the second quarter of 2018 the company plans to increase brand awareness and begin porting the platform to a dapp (decentralized application).

Starting from the fourth quarter of 2018, they will increase marketing efforts and plan on getting 10,000 users a month. Further steps, that are given for two more years, include optimizing the platform and attracting 10 mio users a month in Q4 2020.

Roadmap score: High

Business model:

Sapien platform charges a 1% transaction fee to buyers and sellers on the marketplace if they do not have a certain amount of staked SPN tokens. The minimum, beyond which no fee is charged, is a $20 worth of SPN initially.

Apart from that, Sapien will gain revenue from advertising on their social platform. Even with half the advertising revenue going to users, this is solid business model. Social networks like Facebook and Instagram make billions using it.

Given the platform raises in popularity, high revenues are inevitable.

Business model score: High

Team:

Sapien co-founders have pioneered a significant part of technology involved in the functioning of the platform. The development part in the team is very strong. The CEO and CPO, however, are young and inexperienced in management.

Luckily, the advisors of the project compensate for that. The advisory board includes people that are proficient in business marketing and strategy. It also feature a former CEO of eBay India.

Team score: High

Competitors:

Sapien presents a competitive analysis in their white paper. They name Steemit and Synereo as their competitors and present a list of features that shows Sapien’s superiority.

But the project will face competition from other existing and emerging social networks.

Competitors score: Medium

Overall thoughts:

Sapien is a very promising project that has a lot of features that will attract users to it. With an ambitious team and a great business model the success is granted. A great investment opportunity.